Lone Justice - Sweet, Sweet Baby (I'm Falling)

LA-based Lone Justice showed up on the music scene in 1985 with their self-titled debut, and were another in a long line of bands briefly viewed as The Next Big Thing.

The band came out the the early 1980s cowpunk scene (yes, there really was a country/punk scene in LA in the early 1980s).  With supporters such as Linda Ronstadt and Tom Petty (who wrote "Ways to be Wicked" for the debut album) they were able to land a recording contract with Geffen.  The Lone Justice LP received rave reviews and ... basically didn't sell very well.  For whatever reason, country rock seemed like a hard sell in the eighties, even though it did well in the 1970s and the 1990s (to this day, in fact).  Go figure.

At any rate, most of the band left after the first album, but singer Maria McKee put out a more pop oriented second album the following year (Shelter), which did not do any better.  Lone Justice officially broke up soon afterwards.

"Sweet, Sweet Baby" was the second single from the Lone Justice album, and really shows off the radio-friendly country rock sound that by all rights should have been more successful than it was.

Note that "Ways to be Wicked" was posted on ERV in November 2015.